Natalie Bennett has said austerity has “all but crippled” Greece and called for significant debt relief and investment in the country ahead of her speech at the Greece Solidarity Campaign rally in Trafalgar Square tomorrow (4 July 2015).
Bennett said:
"On Sunday the Greek people are facing a tough choice. It's tough because they've been put under tremendous pressure by a troika of institutions with no democratic legitimacy, that is trying to force more austerity on a country that's already been all but crippled by that policy.
"The nation's current state - more than 40% of children in poverty, more than half of young people unemployed, 45% of pensioners in poverty, and debt at 174% of GDP, much higher than when the crisis started - is a result of austerity. More of the same is truly not an option.
"I'm pleased to be joining the Greece Solidarity Campaign demonstration in Trafalgar Square to offer political support to the Greek people.
"This is a disaster caused by the financial sector and its agents. If it were a tsunami or an earthquake, the world would be rushing to help. We need that kind of response now - significant debt relief and investment in Greece's future. That's the kind of response Greece, with others, offered to Germany after the Second World War. It's time to return the favour."
In a piece in The Independent today, Caroline Lucas MP said:
“The Troika’s intransigence on austerity amounts to nothing short of an attempted coup. A democratically elected Government is being backed in a corner by the servants of capital who are desperate to embarrass the Greek electorate for daring to question austerity. For those of us who believe in the EU as a body which should uphold human rights and value solidarity, this bullying is particularly repulsive.”